Thompson Is Setting Records, Not Limits : Swimming: After taking 0.25 seconds off 100 freestyle mark, Stanford freshman says she can do more.

Jenny Thompson was one of those prune-fingered youngsters who came to the door every summer asking for sponsorship in a swim-a-thon. One look at the waifish Thompson and some folks around Georgetown, Mass., offered 50 cents a lap, figuring she could finish 10, maybe 20 laps.

When Thompson returned with a certificate stating that she had completed all 200 laps, the neighbors marveled, then forked over the cash.

Now, they can say they knew her before she became the first American woman since 1933 to hold the world record in the 100-meter freestyle.

When Thompson worked her way into the record book with a 54.48-second 100 freestyle at the U.S. Olympic trials earlier this month, she fulfilled the promise she first showed as a five-month-old paddling underwater.

Little Jenny could swim long before she could walk.

In slashing 0.25 seconds off the 1986 world record of former East German Kristin Otto, Thompson swam as fast in the second 50 as she had in the first 50.

Her coach, Stanford’s Richard Quick, attributed it to talent. Thompson, a 5-foot-10 bundle of fast-twitch fibers, called it determination.

“I always try to think of the wall as a magnet pulling me in,” she said. “My second half is always my strongest. I try to break away.”

When Thompson broke away from former U.S. record-holder Nicole Haislett and set the record, she knocked an astounding 1.4 seconds off her best time.

“We were thinking 55 or 54.80,” Quick said. “But Jenny said she was thinking of going faster than that.”

Quick had an inkling of what was to come when Thompson set Pacific 10 Conference records last month in Long Beach in the 50-, 100-, and 200-yard freestyles.

Thompson showed similar versatility on the last day of the trials when she broke the American record twice in the 50-meter freestyle.

In the morning preliminary she clocked 25.44. Six hours later, she had a time of 25.20, the second-fastest in history, and 0.22 shy of the world record set in 1988 by China’s Yang Wenyi.

Thompson’s ability to reset goals could mean even faster times in the Olympic Games next summer at Barcelona, Spain.

“I just want to go faster and improve my times,” she said after that fast 50. “I don’t want to set any limits on my potential.”

Beginning today in the NCAA meet at the University of Texas in Austin, Thompson has the opportunity to break more American records. No world records can be set because NCAA competition is in yards, not meters, the international measurement.

With Thompson and fellow Olympians Summer Sanders and Lea Loveless leading the way, Stanford is expected to prevail over the host Longhorns, who have won seven NCAA titles, including the last two.

A Stanford freshman who celebrated her 19th birthday four days before her world-record swim, Thompson grew up in New England.

Her parents divorced when she was a baby and her mother, Margrid, raised her.

At 7, Jenny began competing with a summer club and quickly progressed.

“Her major motivation was that she liked to go on (swimming) trips,” Margrid said.

Inspired by the performances of Tracy Caulkins and Mary T. Meagher in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, Thompson eventually needed a passport.

“I was 11 then,” Thompson said. “That’s the time when you decide you’re going to be serious.”

At 15, she finished one place shy in the 50 freestyle of a trip to South Korea for the 1988 Olympic Games.

Since then, she has traveled to Japan, France, Germany, Australia, Canada and Hawaii.

The jet-setting has not cost Jenny her roots, though. At the end of each day of competition, she telephones her mother in Dover, N.H.

“She’s wonderful,” Margrid said. “She always calls me. Sometimes she has to wait in line for a phone, but she’s never not called. Even from Australia, and that bill took six months to pay. We really have a close relationship.”

The conversations aren’t technical and Margrid calls herself a naive swimming parent, which is why she didn’t realize, initially, that her daughter had broken the world record.

Margrid may not know times, but she knows Jenny.

“She seemed really in charge of her destiny,” Margrid said. “Not overconfident, but relaxed. Her body knew what to do.”

The payoff?

A reward of $5,000 for the world record (which she will pass up to retain her NCAA eligibility), and the chance for gold in Barcelona.